JOSSEY-BASS Choosing College: How to Make Better Learning Decisions Throughout Your Life

Bob has a clear understanding of how to apply and explain what he learnt from his Harvard professors in this book.

Full disclosure: I was an early reader of this title.While there are all kinds of resources for students and parents considering which college to go to, Horn and Moesta's Choosing College contains unique and actionable insights on WHY students choose to go to college - the *real* reasons (versus the reasons they tell others, including college counselors and themselves).The authors use a unique form of research based on interrogation techniques that helped them get the many students they interviewed to "come clean" about their true motivation for choosing college. As it turns out, major drivers for going to college are psychological, such as doing what’s expected of you, or pragmatic, such as finding a socially acceptable way to leave challenging home environments. Many students, particularly those who choose college later in life, are motivated by the desire to change their employment circumstances at key points in their lives.The authors distill data from these “confessions” into a set of five “Jobs” that colleges perform, a framework that can give students and parents valuable insights as they navigate their own choices. For if you consider a college not as a place that you select and that selects you, but as something you “hire” to perform a job (with a full understanding of what the job is you are hiring college to perform), decisions can be based in true motivations, rather than college brochures and societal expectations.Beyond making informed initial choices, Horn and Moesta’s “Jobs to be Done” formulation can also help lower the temperature on decisions made after students matriculate. Leaving a school in order to transfer or take some time off, for example, is often seen as a failure on the part of the student. But if you consider college as something you hire to do a job, then “firing” the college when it’s not doing the job you need it to do (by transferring or taking time off) can be seen as a sensible choice all around, rather than a setback.Choosing College also provides support for a gap year (an option very much in the air these days, and one that was the right choice for my own son a few years ago) as well as other steps students and parents can take to make sure the choice of where (and even whether) to go to college aligns with productive internal motivations, rather external expectations and other factors.While the book is informed by substantial (and intriguing) research, it key benefit is that it provides a practical roadmap for how to make the best decisions when faced with very expensive and often life-changing choices.

Choosing College is full of great information, insights, thought-provoking questions, and frameworks. Even if you're like me and won't have kids in college for another 10 years, the book gives a great overview of college and its evolution (or lack thereof) over the past decades.Throughout the book, the author presents information that was very eye-opening and may go against conventional wisdom. For example, "students who take out loans but don't complete are often worse than if they had never enrolled in the first place".The author dives deep into the various reasons why a student chooses a college and a framework to use to make that very important decision. The basics framework apply's Clayton Christensen's "Jobs to Done Theory" to choosing college. In other words, what are you "hiring" a school to do for you. The book also applies this theory to educators and entrepreneurs as they think about innovating college.

Fantastic book with insights that extend far beyond choosing college. After reading this I find myself reflecting not only on why I've pursued higher ed in the past, but why I've been drawn to various jobs and experiences. The book has offered me a new lens for reflecting on past decisions and guiding new ones.

As a longtime admirer of Clayton Christenson, I looked forward to Choosing College.Unfortunately, I didn't find much of value. Nothing here you couldn't find in dozens of other books.Increasingly, young people must choose between prestige and competence. The hollow prestige of an overpriced Ivy League degree or learning skills valued by the real world.Choosing College seems to have been written for the “consultant set,” who issue meaningless white papers and cater to those who schmooze college admissions officers, when what the world needs is more young men and women of character who can do the “real jobs” Clayton Christenson championed.